


Different

by black_wings



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Developing Relationship, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Recovery, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 03:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11050677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/black_wings/pseuds/black_wings
Summary: "Tony pictured his husband, and he couldn't be more thankful for destiny. Because despite working in strange, mysterious and often painful ways, fate had brought him the one thing he'd always craved for: the love of his life."Or, Tony never became Iron Man and instead he started helping Make-A-Wish Foundation fulfill wishes to meet heroes.Written for a prompt for the 2017 WinterIron Spring Fling





	Different

**Author's Note:**

  * For [catZY](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catZY/gifts).



> Here's the full prompt. "Tony never became Iron Man. He uses his genius and money to create innovative medical tech and fund philanthropies. He starts helping Make-A-Wish Foundation fulfill wishes to meet heroes. Then some girl wants to meet the Winter Soldier. So now Tony has to track down the elusive anti-hero/anti-villain and convince him to go visit this girl."
> 
> I didn't mention the girl, I hope that's okay!
> 
> A million thanks to [marsmaywander](http://archiveofourown.org/users/marsmaywander) for the beta work; she did an amazing job and on really short notice! 
> 
> I hope you like it <3

Tony liked to think his life could be divided in two parts: before and after Afghanistan. He couldn’t say he was proud of who he was before Afghanistan and, even though he wasn’t exactly happy with who he was now, he was slowly getting there.

Honestly, before everything went down, before he was kidnapped, threatened, tortured and almost forced to build a massive weapon of destruction, it had never crossed Tony’s mind that his life could take such a wild turn. Tony never thought it had to, either, perfectly happy with the way things were. He had money and anyone he wanted, he partied and drank, he could do whatever he wished and get away with it, there were no consequences, no limits; he had everything.

At least, everyone thought he did. The truth was Tony only had two people in his life who weren’t interested in his money or his genius, and he had no one who desired to spend longer than a night with him. As much as Tony denied it or tried to ignore it, that he was lonely, not just alone; he had no one to rely on, no one to care for him, to love him and accept him the way he had always longed to be accepted.

Tony knew that people tended to judge him by what they read in magazines and that nobody seemed to care that the majority of those articles were a lie. He knew he wasn’t the easiest person to deal with; his quirks and personality were more than off-putting to the population in general. The problem was that no one was even willing to try and see past that, past the front he put up for the journalists and the mask he used on interviews. Not a single person cared enough to put in that kind of effort.

And that was fine. Tony didn’t care. He loved his life the way it was and he certainly didn’t need things to change.

But then Afghanistan happened. One second Tony was in the middle of the desert, surrounded by a team of scientists and soldiers and the next he was being blown up.

Tony woke up in the cave next to Yinsen. The man gave him the strength and courage Tony couldn’t find in himself, inspired Tony and gave him hope, comforted him when they were left alone. The man was Tony’s saving grace and Tony was one hundred percent sure he wouldn’t have made it on his own.

Tony refused to build the weapon for his captors and he somehow managed to hold on until the rescue came.

It was public knowledge that the Avengers had been behind the rescue. Everyone had read the story, or had heard it told in numerous interviews, of how the Avengers had burst in, killed all the terrorists, extracted Tony and Yinsen, and proceeded to blast the cave, burning all the terrorists’ plans.

Only Tony, Yinsen, the Avengers, and a handful of select people at SHIELD knew the real story. A man - Tony suspected an agent of some kind, - had infiltrated the cave and managed to sneak past all the guards unnoticed. He had placed some kind of tracking device that sent the cave's location to SHIELD. The man hadn’t said a word, but just as he had been about to leave he had looked at Tony with tired, sorrow-filled eyes and nodded. Tony had tried to ask the man to stay, to call him back, to ask him his name and thank him. Tony hadn’t managed to get any words out, the mix of shock, surprise and fear rending him unable to speak. The man was gone before Tony could do anything more than stare.

The Avengers had arrived a few hours later and taken care of the rest.

Tony never saw the man again but his dreams were haunted by tormented blue-grey eyes for years.

After that - after Afghanistan and after defeating Obadiah, who had been behind his kidnapping all along - Tony changed. It was impossible not to, after what he had been through. He kept in contact with Yinsen, asked him for advice and sought guidance and encouragement when all his plans looked like they were going to fail.

 From then on, Tony stopped producing weapons. He focused on creating innovative medical tech that could actually help people and improve their lives, instead of ending them. He created advanced prostheses for amputees, then enhanced them and installed sensory feeling, only after did he start working on the aesthetics, preferring them to work the best they could rather than being aesthetically pleasing. He donated money to charity and noble causes and helped fund philanthropic organizations.

And, having successfully changed the Stark Industries, Tony worked on changing himself. He dropped all the self-destructive habits and started focusing on what was truly important in life. He started living life to the fullest, but gave the expression a completely different meaning than before. Tony did what he wanted, what he truly wanted and not what the public assumed he did. He strived to be happy, this time.

Five months after Afghanistan, Tony tried to find the masked man. He spent months digging up information, more often than not struggling to separate rumors and ghost stories from facts and the actual truth. After investing so much time into his research, Tony came up relatively empty handed. There wasn’t anything concrete, no actual witnesses on claimed sightings, nothing. It was as if the man didn’t exist. There was one name Tony kept running into, though: The Winter Soldier. The name itself promised nothing good, but all the information on it was even worse. He was an assassin, and a damn good one. His apparent weapon of choosing was a riffle, but he wasn’t contracted by anyone as far as it was known (not that there was a lot that was known), and there was no apparent connection among his targets. He appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly. He wasn’t seen by anyone, and his name was whispered in fear by all those who’d heard of him.

Tony tried his damned hardest, but in the end there was nothing he could do to find the man. There was no clue, no lead, no way to get to him.

Nearly four years later, and after Pepper and Rhodey asked him to drop it a million times, Tony gave up and let the matter go. Even so, Tony never even attempted to erase the man, those eyes and that one glance they’d shared from his memory.

 

* * *

 

Tony wasn't sure when exactly he had started helping the Make-A-Wish Foundation fulfill wishes to meet heroes. He supposed it must've been a spur-of-the-moment kind of decision that he'd made at some point when he was feeling particularly guilty.

Not that long after getting involved with the association, arranging meetings between the Avengers and little and older kids was kind of a common occurrence for Tony.

Before long, he was on a first name basis with all of the Avengers and didn’t find strange that Clint sent him cat videos whenever he felt like it. He didn’t hesitate to call Bruce to discuss a new theory, didn’t feel weird about teasing Steve, or asking Natasha for advice, or Sam for support.

After almost a year of friendship, Tony offered to let them move into the Tower, claiming it would be easier for them to work as a team if they lived together, shared the same space, and got used to moving around each other. It had nothing to do with the fact that he adored their company and felt lonely by himself. _Nothing_.

Tony found he was very much okay with fitting in with the group of friends and he didn’t mind housing the misfits one bit.

 

* * *

 

Tony heard about the whole being infiltrated in SHIELD-being-infiltrated-by-Hydra scandal. He couldn’t say he really kept up with it, though. It all happened way too fast, as all Avengers-related events usually do. There were simply too many things on his mind - too much to work on and countless meetings he was required to attend - for him to be able to check in every hour with his friends.

Tony had been locked in the workshop for almost two days, which is why it came as a huge shock when he realized Bucky Barnes, Cap’s lost best friend, was actually alive, had always been alive, and had been under Hydra’s control.

It knocked him on his ass, quite literally, not that Tony would ever confess to that, when he put two and two together and entertained the possibility of Bucky Barnes being The Winter Soldier.

He beat himself up for not arriving at that conclusion sooner when, not two days later, the news was stamped on the front page of every newspaper and tabloid. There were mixed reactions. Many were of the opinion that The Winter Soldier had to pay for his crimes, blatantly ignoring the fact that Bucky had been tortured and had had his memory erased for the past seventy years. There were others, fewer, who defended Bucky should not be held responsible, and that he should be given any and all medical and psychological assistance he needed.

It surprised Tony, though in retrospect it really shouldn’t have, when The Winter Soldier – Bucky, he wasn’t that anymore, - disappeared the next day, before the government or SHIELD or Hydra or anyone really tried to take him back and make him a prisoner again.

Tony suspected that Steve knew where Bucky was, but when he asked, the blond denied knowing the location of his best friend.

“Please, Steve, you don’t understand. I need to talk to him.”

“I don’t know where he is, Tony.”

“We can meet him in any place of his own choosing, at any time. Please, I just need five minutes with him. Just to speak. Please, Steve.”

A sigh. “I’m sorry, Tony. I wish I could help.”

Tony understood. He truly did. The guy had been through a traumatic ordeal, if you could even call it that. It was obvious Steve wasn’t going to just give his whereabouts away.

The genius tried to find him on his own, but got nowhere.

“He’ll come back eventually, Tony. You’ll just have to wait. And if the conversation is actually important, you will. Bucky needs space and time to deal with what he’s been through. He doesn’t need paparazzi watching his every move. He needs to feel safe, not cornered, crowded, and watched.”

And Tony got that. He did. He just wished Bucky could spare him a few minutes.

 

* * *

 

The Avengers all had admirers and a surprisingly large number of children who wanted to meet them.

Tony was used to scheduling children to meet with high-demand heroes. He was pleasantly taken aback when letters came, asking to meet The Winter Soldier, and then didn’t stop coming.

While the majority of adults were worried judging and forming an opinion about Bucky based on what he’d been forced to do, all the children were sympathetic and felt for him, wanting to hug him and demanding his teammates did while they couldn’t.

Tony might have cried a little.

It went without mention that he redoubled his efforts and immediately started searching for Bucky again.

Turned out, he didn’t need to.

Bucky Barnes returned to the Tower eleven months after he left, exactly nine days after Tony had 'accidentally' let it slip to Steve that there were numerous children dying to meet his best friend.

Tony wasn’t hurt over the fact that Bucky had come home for some children but hadn’t wanted to meet him for a simple quick chat. Tony wasn’t that petty or selfish. No, he wasn’t.

 

* * *

 

Tony would’ve thought Bucky would be withdrawn, guarded, tense, always waiting for an attack, constantly prepared to defend himself.

He wasn’t. Not really.

Bucky was kind of reserved, but Tony believed that had more to do with his personality than the trauma he’d suffered. There were moments when Bucky would stare straight ahead, not moving a muscle or saying anything, and everyone steered clear until the episode passed. Tony suspected the man carried at least a dozen weapons on his person, but undoubtedly so did Natasha.

He was calm but he was also _sarcastic_ and relentlessly teased Steve. And he had a Brooklyn accent.  Tony may have been in love.

Tony was supposed to speak to Bucky. He’d searched for him for so long, waited and imagined how the conversation would go down millions of times.

Until now, the only words he’d directed to the other man were, “Welcome to Avenger Tower. I’m Tony and I believe you’ve already met the others. I hope you find the place to your liking.”

Every time an opportunity presented itself, the words just wouldn’t come.

 

* * *

 

Bucky met with the kids. They all loved him and hugged him and cried on him.

The press talked. Some criticized and others applauded.

Bucky was happy though, and that was all Tony and the rest of the Avengers really cared about.

 

* * *

 

Tony found Bucky in the kitchen at two in the morning.

He looked different like this, with the moonlight coming through the windows and casting shadows on his face. He looked tired, haunted, nothing like the seemingly care-free version Tony was used to seeing during the day.

Bucky stared out the windows, “I couldn’t sleep.”

“I know. I have nightmares too.”

Bucky stumbled half a step back before catching himself and taking two purposeful steps forward. “Want to explain?”

“Oh wow, I swear that sounded a lot less creepy in my head. I have Jarvis informing me when there’s someone on my floor at night. Call me paranoid.”

All the tension bled out of Bucky and he slumped a little. “Oh. Well, I do rounds through every floor to make sure we’re safe and that there’s no one here.” Bucky’s smile had a hard edge to it. “Call me paranoid.”

“I wouldn’t. Not ever. You’re entitled to feel threatened. You’re living in an unknown space with new people. It must be stressful. But you have nothing to worry about. Jarvis would warn us the moment anyone, or anything, even thought to attempt to break in.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah. Jarvis is the best. He would never let anything happen to us under his watch. Right, Jarv?”

“Of course, sir. Rest assured, Sargent Barnes, your safety will not be put at risk.”

Bucky seemed surprised but not startled, so Steve must’ve told him about Tony’s AI. “Thank you, Jarvis.”

They were silent for a few moments and, because Tony never managed to keep his mouth shut, “I could never be sure whether or not you were pretending to be fine.”

Bucky sighed. “Steve wants me to be fine. He needs me to have recovered and to feel better. I don’t, not much anyway. I can see their faces. I can hear my screams. I can feel the pain. I mean, I _am_ getting better. It’s slow going, but I’m recovering. But Stevie needs me to be fine _now_. He’s done so much for me. I can do this for him, give him the illusion of my happiness.”

A beat and then Tony blurted, “So, how long have you and Cap been dating?”

Bucky choked. “Oh my god, Tony. Never. We never dated.”

Tony didn’t feel thrilled by that fact. “You know it’s okay now, don’t you? It’s-”

“Tony. It will never happen. Things aren’t like that between us.”

“Oh. Okay, then.”

“Why have you been avoiding me?”

Tony stared at him, eyes a little bit too wide. “Avoiding? No, I haven’t been avoiding you. I’m really good at avoiding people. Trust me, if I were avoiding you, you wouldn’t even notice.”

The look Bucky directed at him was deadpan. “I noticed.”

Tony laughed, a little uneasily and a lot awkward. “Okay.”

“Tony.” And Bucky looked kind of worried, like he was scared he was the problem and Tony couldn’t have that.

He took a breath. He guessed they were doing this, then. “Okay, well, I’m not sure you remember, but... You see the thing is, we kind of already met. I was in Afghanistan, being held hostage in a cave, and you saved me. You came and called the Avengers, it was actually how I met them. They probably wouldn’t have found me without your help. You saved my life. And I just wanted to thank you.”

“I remember. Hydra had told me to plant the tracker and connect it to SHIELD. They planned to have their agents find your location, take you, and fake your death. They wanted to use you to build weapons, and I couldn’t do it. I don’t know why. I’ve killed thousands of people and didn’t hesitate once. But I couldn’t hand you over to them. I looked at you and you were terrified but you didn’t give in to your captors' demands. You’re a good person, Tony. You didn’t deserve that kind of fate. So I used the tracker to call the Avengers because I knew they’d come.”

“You must’ve gotten in trouble for that.”

Bucky blew out a breath. “Yeah, I did. But it was worth it.”

“Not sure I agree on that, but I’m glad you think so.”

“I really, really do.”

 

* * *

 

Something changed between them after that night. Tony couldn’t exactly pinpoint what, but there was something different.

They talked more, not just during the day but also in the middle of the night. They didn’t tiptoe around one another either. There was a sense of comfort and familiarity that hadn’t been there before.

They’d met in the kitchen for the fourth time that week when Bucky asked if Tony wanted to watch a movie.

“What movie?”

“I don’t really care. Choose one that you like. I just think it’d be nice.”

Tony snorted. “Watching a movie?”

“With you. I think it’d be nice watching a movie with you.”

Tony could feel his cheeks heating up. “Oh. Yeah. Okay.”

They watched Tangled and fell asleep right after it ended, cuddled up on the couch.

 

* * *

 

That’s how the team found them like the following morning.

Bruce smiled. Steve blushed. Sam cackled. Natasha glared at anyone who dared make too much noise. Clint took photos.

 

* * *

 

The first time Tony was alone when he caught Bucky having an episode was two weeks after they found each other in the kitchen.

Coincidentally, it was two in the morning again. Tony considered calling Steve, but there was nothing he would have done that Tony himself couldn’t do, and Bucky had already confessed to having to act okay for Steve's sake.

So Tony sat next to Bucky on the couch and, to show him he wasn’t alone and to provide comfort, held his hand.

Bucky snapped out of it, gasping and shuddering, two minutes and fifteen seconds later.

Tony held him and shushed him and rocked them both on the couch, keeping up a stream of what he hoped were comforting words. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re gonna be fine.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky asked Tony on a date a year after they officially met, after spending better part of that same year going to therapy and focusing on recovering.

Steve said Bucky was different, more like his old self.

To Tony, Bucky was the same as he’d ever been, only lighter, freer and more confident and sure of himself.

 

* * *

 

They took things slow, weren’t in any hurry to rush things and mess them up.

They shared their first kiss in Brooklyn, at three in the morning, the stars and the moon their only witnesses.

They slept together in a bed for the first time after one of Tony’s particularly bad nightmares, and made it a habit that was never broken.

They made love on their sixth month anniversary, after the night turned out to be a disaster because Tony wanted things to be so perfect he messed up the reservations in the restaurant, and then burnt their diner and almost ran Bucky over while getting the car out of the garage.

The couple got engaged five years after they’d been properly introduced. Bucky had gotten down on one knee to lace his shoe and Tony had started crying incoherently.

“Yes. Yes! Yes, you asshole! I wanted to propose first,” before proceeding to take the ring box out of his pocket.

Meanwhile, Bucky had just stood there, dumbstruck, “I was tying my shoe… Oh my god, you want to marry me? You were going to propose?”. And then he started crying, unaware of Tony’s mounting panic because what if this wasn’t what Bucky wanted and it was the final straw that led him to break up with the genius? But Tony proposed and Bucky said yes, and they cried and laughed and then cried some more.

Things weren’t always perfect. They wouldn’t be Tony and Bucky if it was all smooth sailing. They each had insecurities and issues. But they belonged to one another, belonged together.

They were each other’s happiness and family and there was nothing in this world or in any other that could tear them apart.

 

* * *

 

Years later, while reflecting on the past and how things had turned out, Tony liked to entertain the idea that his life could be divided in two more parts: before and after Bucky.

It was in those moments that the brunet pictured Bucky's sleeping expression, Bucky laughing with the sun lightening up his face, Bucky teasing him, them bantering, Bucky holding him, and the two of them dancing.

Tony pictured his husband, and he couldn't be more thankful for destiny. Because despite working in strange, mysterious and often painful ways, fate had brought him the one thing he'd always craved: the love of his life.

 


End file.
